Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Face Inevitable Changes
The world has warmed so much that substantial loss in Antarctica’s crucial ice sheets may be unavoidable even if the world keeps under 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, a new study finds, and could potentially lock in world-changing sea level rise in the coming centuries. Research published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday looks at basal melting—or melting from below due to warm ocean water—of Antarctica’s ice sheets, which buttress the continent’s glaciers and protect them from exposure to the ocean. The study finds that even if we curb warming to the most aggressive targets set out by the Paris Agreement, the ocean around the continent’s ice sheets is set to warm at three times the historical rate. “It appears we may have lost control of the west Antarctic ice shelf melting over the 21st century,” lead author Kaitlin Naughten, an ocean modeler with the British Antarctic Survey, told NBC. “West Antarctic ice shelf melting is one impact of climate change that we’re probably just going to have to adapt to, and that very likely means some amount of sea level rise we cannot avoid. Coastal communities will either have to build around or be abandoned.”
(AP, CNN, New York Times $, The Guardian, USA Today, NBC, Reuters)
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